Healthcare and divided government

I'm intrigued by this new poll on attitudes toward healthcare reform, as we gear up for tomorrow's big (not actually so big) repeal vote. AP via HuffPo:

As lawmakers shaken by the shooting of a colleague return to the health care debate, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds raw feelings over President Barack Obama's overhaul have subsided...

...The poll finds that 40 percent of those surveyed said they support the law, while 41 percent oppose it. Just after the November congressional elections, opposition stood at 47 percent and support was 38 percent.

As for repeal, only about one in four say they want to do away with the law completely. Among Republicans support for repeal has dropped sharply, from 61 percent after the elections to 49 percent now.

Also, 43 percent say they want the law changed so it does more to re-engineer the health care system. Fewer than one in five say it should be left as it is.

Passions have subsided, I suspect, because conservatives are less enraged now that they feel they have a voice in the government. Independents repeatedly say in polls that they are fine with divided government. So that leaves only liberals who are really unhappy, witness the 43% who want more changes.

I wasn't happy on election night, Lord knows, but I guess in many ways Obama is better off with a divided government. If the Democrats ran everything, the Republicans, so expert at whining in opposition and ginning up phony accusations, could continue blaming every single bad thing that ever happened on the Democrats. And now, in independent voters' minds, the suspicion that Democrats are going to try to jerk the country to the left are null and void. They know it can't happen. The president and the GOP House have to fight over the middle, which is how the middle likes it, and which is probably on balance good for the country.

The problem is that the middle is way to the right of where it once was, even 15 years ago. Remember, just 15 plus three years ago, Republicans were solidly behind a healthcare plan pretty much just like the one they're going to vote to repeal tomorrow.

Divided government has its upsides, and seeing Obama fighting harder for the middle, as we'll see this year and next, will be good. But at some point, the Democrats have to think of something to do about the fact that the middle keeps moving right.

And no, it is not because the country keeps moving right. Yes, on the level of political philosophy, comparatively few people are willing to call themselves liberal. But people like Social Security. They love Medicare. They want environmental protection. They want higher taxes on the upper brackets. As we see above, 43% of them want more aggressive healthcare reform, not less. In many polls we could all Google in five seconds, they even say they back things like a carbon tax. As the old saying goes: theoretically conservative, operationally liberal.

So it's not the country that keeps moving right. It's this town, sauced up in right-wing rhetoric and buried by corporate money. At some point, Democrats have to arrest that movement, or some day soon the middle is going to a be place that even Barry Goldwater thought was a little crazy.

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